Today the Census Bureau reported that there are now 300 million people in the United States. The number now, as I clicked onto the Census website, is 300,000,492. That is, by the way, 4.58 percent of estimated world population. We're more like 5 percent than 4 percent of the world now. One out of every 22 people in the world lives in the United States.
Conventional wisdom used to have it that population growth was bad. Now we're seeing many voices saying that it is good. It is good for the world that there are more Americans. It is bad for the world that there will soon be fewer Italians. Joel Kotkin has an excellent article on this milestone, looking ahead to when there will be 400 million Americans in about 2050, in the Wall Street Journal. It's not up yet on the opinionjournal.com website, but here's another article by Kotkin on the same theme. Meanwhile, John Tierney emerges from behind the Times Select subscription wall to comment.
Here's my Creators Syndicate column for this week. Headline: Don't expect a political realignment. If Republicans lose next month, it will be more about competence than ideology.
Here's an article from Popular Mechanics on how the North Korean regime is developing biological weapons. Pretty scary stuff: anthrax, plague, botulism. North Korea is a proven proliferator, and these bioweapons could kill millions of people.
Finally, here is Lexington Green of chicagoboyz.net recalling Lord Bryce's chapter in The American Commonwealth on why the best men in America don't go into politics. He argues that it's a good thing they don't. Congress tends to give us "the wisdom of crowds," and that's usually enough.
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